Andrew Schneider writes about public health and worker safety issues. His stories run the gamut from investigations of corporate and government cover-ups of toxic perils, to stories about gutsy federal , medical and industry workers doing what's right, to what makes the shrimp in your refrigerator glow at night and why white truffles might be worth $4,000 a pound.

First study finds MRSA in U.S. pigs and farmers; U.K reports 3 patients sickened with the bacterium from eating pork only.

An effective way to say there isn’t a problem is never to look. That seems to be precisely what most U.S. government food-safety agencies are doing when it comes to determining whether the livestock in our food supply is contaminated with MRSA and if so, whether the often-fatal bacterium is being passed on to consumers who buy and consume that meat.

We know that some strains of MRSA – methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus – are extremely dangerous. Dr. Monina Klevens, of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, examined the cases of the disease reported in hospitals, schools and prisons in one year and extrapolated that “94,360 invasive MRSA infections occurred in the United States in 2005; these infections were associated with death in 18,650 cases.”

Earlier his year, Dr. Scott Weese, from the Department of Pathobiology at the Ontario Veterinary College told those attending the International Conference on Emerging Infectious Diseases at the CDC that there was a problem. He and his colleagues had found MRSA in 10 percent of 212 samples of pork chops and ground pork bought in four Canadian provinces.

“I think it is very likely that the situation is the same in the U.S.,” he told me in a phone interview.

“We’ve proven MRSA is in pigs and the marketed pork in Canada, and we know that it’s also in U.S. pigs. It’s inconceivable that it wouldn’t also be found in the pork products from those pigs.”

This raised a bunch of obvious questions, such as, who exactly is checking to see if antibiotic-resistant staph bacteria is in the 762 million pounds of Canadian pork that’s imported into the U.S. each year?

The answer appears to be no one.

It should be the USDA. Dr. David Goldman is in charge of the agency’s four laboratories that examine imported food.

“Any pathogen or hazard that’s transmitted through the foods we regulate is a potential issue for us, and so you know, certainly we are aware of the study (Weese) did,” Goldman told me during an interview at a recent food-safety meeting in Seattle.

“There is no indication MRSA has been identified in swine going into the retail market. Not in this country. Not in swine or other livestock being sold for food in this country,” the doctor added.

But, none of the USDA labs that he runs are checking for MRSA in imported meat.

“We just don’t have a test for it,” Goldman said.

So, do we have MRSA in our American grown pigs?

The Food and Drug Administration says it doesn’t know.

Mike Herndon, an agency spokesman, said FDA scientists have been “following the emergence of MRSA from humans and animals in Central Europe and Canada and are monitoring the situation very closely.”

The FDA is aware of Weese’s study, but “we do not yet have similar data with regards to the MRSA situation among food animals and retail meats,” Herndon said.

There is no indication that FDA has tested meat for MRSA.

But the FDA and USDA eagerly pointed to a group called the National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System as the protector of food and humans from foodborne bacteria. The coalition of scientists from several federal agencies primarily target salmonella, campylobacter and E. coli.

But the group does not currently screen for MRSA.

The National Pork Producers Council in Washington is sure there’s no problem. They told me “there is nothing to worry about; MRSA (in pigs) has not been found this side of the border” and “USDA and CDC has given our pigs a clean bill of health.”

A CDC spokeswoman told me that she could find “no indication we made that statement.”

Interestingly, the pork lobbyists have said their industry would oppose any attempt to test all livestock for MRSA, calling the testing “unnecessary to protect public health.”

Whereas our government apparently doesn’t see the need nor have the ability to see if pigs in the U.S. are carrying MRSA, Tara Smith, an assistant professor for the University of Iowa department of epidemiology, and her graduate researchers have done what is apparently is the first testing of swine for MRSA in the U.S.

Dr. Tara Smith

They swabbed the noses of 209 pigs from 10 farms in Iowa and Illinois and found MRSA in 70 percent of the porkers.

Today, in Boston, at the annual meeting of the American Society for Microbiology, Abby Harper, one of Smith’s graduate assistants, presented the results of a study that she and Michael Male did on 20 workers at the Iowa swine farms. Harper reported that 45 percent of the workers carried the same MRSA bacterium as the pigs.

Smith told me last night that she will be working with collaborators in Minnesota, Ohio, North Carolina and perhaps other areas to examine more swine farms.

“We’re going to be looking at conventional, free-range and organic or antibiotic-free pigs,” Smith said.

“We will be paying special attention to the antibiotics that are being used because there are indications that the tetracycline used in swine farming may be the cause of the spread of MRSA,” she explained.

All of Smith’s important work raises the question that Weese raised in Canada: Is MRSA-contaminated meat being sold in the U.S. market?

It is believed that proper cooking will kill the MRSA bacterium. The health threat for butchers and cooks alike, if there is one, will come from improperly handled meat.

“If people wash their hands after handling raw pork and prevent cross-contamination, risks should be very low,” Weese said from Canada.

“The main possible concern is that people could get MRSA on their hands from raw pork, then touch their nose. The nose is the prime site for MRSA to live,” he told me.

Some public-heath experts worry that butchers and professional and home cooks may be infected if MRSA bacteria on their hands entered a cut or a wound.
An understanding of the risk from MRSA in meat becomes more urgent in view of a report yesterday from the United Kingdom.

Scientists reported that three patients in separate hospitals in Scotland were infected with the ST398 strain of MRSA, the same strain that Smith and her researchers found in Midwest farms. And it’s the same strain that FDA’s Herndon says is of particular concern in the veterinary medicine and food safety arenas.

What makes this particularly important is that doctors reported that none of the patients worked on a farm nor had a close association with farm animals, raising the possibility that the superbug has entered the food chain in the U.K., according to an article by Martin Hickman in The Independent, a U.K. publication.

And, as you mull over this all-too-long post, be advised that Weese warns that MRSA could also be in beef, chicken and lamb, but no one is checking.